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Now it's too late, and Lupin's gone. The only possible adult left fighting for them has returned back to his family and Harry knows this is the right thing but oh, how he wishes he could just crumple like the child that he is and allow someone else to take care of it, others stronger and older than him to shoulder the burden.

Hermione and Ron retreated upstairs soon after the fight, cautious and tender around him in the way they acted most of sixth year when he'd been out of his mind with grief. He's sick of it, sick of being pitied, sick of fighting, sick of being angry. Sick of it through plain exhaustion, like when you've eaten a food or played a song so many times that you know every single detail about it and you know the gauntlet so well it's repetitive. What's that quote? The one about madness, about doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different result. That's what's happening right now, and that's what's going to be the death of him, just like his parents.

Harry sighs and heaves himself to his feet. He clumsily pads across the sitting room to reach the stairwell where he ascends, mindful of the two trick stairs and the sentient bannister. No exact destination in mind, he allows his weary footsteps to wander to the third floor, where he slows to a stop in front of a familiar dark mahogany door.

He keeps getting pulled towards Sirius' room, and he isn't entirely sure why. It may be his morbid longing for an alternate life, one where his parents were alive, where Lupin and Sirius were maybe just his uncles but loved him more than anything, one where nobody was plagued by war and fear and hurt.

Harry enters the room like slipping into a pond, taking a deep step into the murky waters where mysteries lie below. He trails his finger along the peeling and rotting wallpaper, slowly circling the room. His mind can't help but fabricate memories that were never his, of him and Sirius in this room bonding, or maybe comforting him after his nightmares or those moments where his mind whites out and he shakes so hard he can’t even breathe.

The truth is he'd never known Sirius that well. He'd constructed a narrative for his own benefit, pretended not to see the bottles that Arthur and Tonks and Lupin swept away or the dark rings under Sirius' eyes or the sharp note in his laughs that reminded you that something was not quite right.

The thing he hadn’t made up or embellished, though, was how hard Sirius fought to be okay for him. Harry, despite evidence to the contrary, isn’t stupid. He knows Sirius perked up when he was around, took better care of himself, and in the days leading up to Harry leaving was moody and aggressive.

Sirius was worse in this house, too. All of the progress it seemed he’d made during Harry’s fourth year dripped away when the house became the Order headquarters. He was sullen and reckless and Harry just looked away because he’d yearned for a parent for years upon years and he couldn’t handle the image he’d fabricated shattering. He wasn’t sure why things had changed, only knew that they had.

When he’d learned that Sirius had been hurt, abused, the same way Harry had— it had all clicked, and a kinship had begun to develop between them, never allowed to grow . Harry hadn’t even known it at the time, still can’t exactly describe what the Dursley’s had done as abuse, so conditioned since childhood to think them normal and himself the freak. But Sirius knew before he did, saw the flinches and the averted eyes and knew.

The wishing for his return is what tears Harry apart, what he shoves deep, deep down in himself to avoid crumbling to pieces. The sliver of hope that the Veil hadn’t been permanent. Death has been Harry’s companion his entire life but it took Sirius, took someone who had already gone through so much tragedy and hurt, someone who deserved a happy ending more than any of them, and snuffed it out. Took away what could’ve been years of healing, an eventual happy ending.

Harry can’t imagine a future for himself anymore. Not because he thinks he’s going to die, which he does, but because he spent three years imagining a future with Sirius in it, with him every step of the way. Harry bringing a girlfriend home to introduce to him, getting the third degree. Maybe Sirius meeting Harry’s children, eyes shining. But now he—

Harry startles as he trips over a shin-high trunk, quickly catching his balance. He is frozen in the stale air for a moment and then he huffs self-deprecatingly, one hand still firmly planted on the wall. He draws it away and stands, looking at the culprit of his fall curiously.

The trunk is mostly un-embellished except for a faded hogwarts emblem on the front and above it— Harry brushes away dust to reveal the name Sirius O. Black in gold plating. Harry’s mouth opens a fraction as he realises the trunk, reminiscent of his own, must have been Sirius’ when he was in Hogwarts.

Sirius had touched this as an eleven year-old, maybe, taken it to the train for the very first time where he met James Potter and Peter Pettigrew and Remus Lupin, people he would one day live and die for. Grief pulls at Harry’s gut and he sniffs once and inhales to bypass it.

He considers the trunk for a moment, guilt swirling in his chest. He’s tempted to open it, see what’s inside, even if it’s stupid papers or something. But what if… He’s not here, Harry tells himself firmly. And he never will be again.

He descends to his knees then unlatches both sides with his thumbs and opens the trunk, coughing at the dust. Only once it’s open does it occur to him that it might have been trapped with a hex or a curse, but nothing remarkable happens so he looks into the trunk.

It’s uniformly boring at first glance, and he can’t help but be slightly disappointed. A few notebooks, wrapped letters, and a file folder stacked neatly on one side. On the other, a faded leather jacket.

Harry tenderly lifts the jacket up, careful with it as he sits down cross-legged next to the trunk. It’s fit for a grown man, not a teenager, so the trunk has clearly been emptied out since Sirius’ school days. The absence of creases or stains on the softened leather tells a story of a favourite item of clothing, of a jacket Sirius had clearly worn often. Harry hadn’t seen him wear it once, so he assumes it’s a relic from pre-Azkaban. (More than he wants to know what his parents were like he wants to know what Sirius had been like before Azkaban, before twelve years in that cesspool of dementors that had destroyed Harry after only minutes in their presence.

After a moment, silent except for his soft breaths in the dusty room, he sets it aside. He won’t take it with him but after, After, he will return for it, make sure it sees new life.

He looks back into the trunk and pulls out the file folder. He goes to flip through it absently but pauses at the sight of his name. He tenderly traces his name typed in bold on the front page, directly below Ministry of Magic and Department of Magical Child Welfare logos.

Certificate of Adoption

This is an official document, please type or print only

The only boxes left empty in the long and detailed sheet are for the places where the adopter would put their name and signature. The rest are filled out in achingly familiar handwriting, detailing Harry’s name, birth parents, the hospital he was born in, if it’s a step-parent adoption or not— NO, it says in all caps.

Harry forgets how to breathe and slams the file folder closed. He regrets opening the trunk, entering Sirius’ room, accepting his invitation to Hogwarts— he regrets it all, wants to go back to his cupboard where he may have been just a freak but at least he knew what he was.

He’s crying before he even exhales again, tears streaming down his cheeks in hot wet trails that he wipes away furiously. “You left me,” he cries into the empty room, scrambling away from the innocent file folder on the ugly carpet. “You left me, and it’s all my fault.”

Nobody replies. The file lays on the ground, taunting.